Setting Clients Up for Open Enrollment Success

Quick look: Open enrollment gives brokers an opportunity to help clients evaluate whether their benefits strategy still reflects their workforce, uncover gaps in their current offerings, and identify ways to make their benefits more competitive. This guide explores the questions to bring to your next client conversation and how a professional employer organization (PEO) can give you additional resources to support your clients.

Open enrollment is a chance for small and mid-sized employers to revisit their benefits strategy. For brokers, it’s also a chance to demonstrate the value you bring beyond plan selection and renewal.

Today’s employees expect benefits that reflect the realities of their lives, and they need clear guidance to understand what’s available to them. However, that expectation isn’t always being met, with two-thirds of employees reporting their companies fall short when it comes to promoting, explaining, or improving their benefits offerings. And when workers don’t understand what they’re being offered, disengagement and turnover risk can follow.

This is where brokers have an edge to step in with a more consultative approach. Rather than simply presenting plan options, you can help clients look at what their workforce needs now, where they may be falling short, and what they can do to strengthen their overall value proposition.

A PEO can add another layer of support. In addition to access to benefit options that can rival those available to much larger employers, brokers can tap into human resources (HR) and benefits expertise, along with technology, and employee support that can help clients get more from their benefits strategy.

Here’s where to start.

Taking stock of current benefits packages

Before clients start comparing plans, it’s worth gauging if their current offerings still make sense for the workforce they have now. Three questions can guide that conversation:

1. Has the workforce changed?

Hiring, attrition, and shifting demographics all influence which benefits resonate with employees. A plan that worked well two years ago may no longer reflect what today’s team needs. Growing interest in family-planning benefits, mental health coverage, and culturally sensitive care are good examples of areas worth revisiting.

2. What are employees asking for?

A plan is only successful if people participate in it. Surveys and open conversations before enrollment season can help surface how satisfied employees are with current offerings, which benefits matter most to them, and whether they’ve seen something elsewhere they wish their employer offered.

This information can also help you have a more strategic conversation with your client. Instead of recommending benefits based solely on market trends, you can connect your recommendations to what their employees are actually telling them.

3. How is the plan being communicated?

Employees make better decisions when they have time to absorb information and ask questions. That means sharing details early and using more than one channel to reach staff no matter where they work. A mix of live sessions, recorded walkthroughs, and written guides tends to reach more people than any single method on its own.

Give your clients a head start

Our open enrollment toolkit has the messaging roadmap, timelines, and email templates to help your clients keep employees informed >>

Look beyond the traditional benefits package

Once you’ve assessed the status of a client’s current benefits, the next conversation is about where they are headed. For SMBs competing for talent against larger employers, expanding the benefits strategy can be one way to stand out. Smaller or voluntary offerings can help address specific employee needs and give your clients more ways to differentiate their overall package.

A few areas worth raising:

• Work-life balance: Flexible arrangements have become an important consideration for many workers, with 52% and 26% of employees working hybrid or remote, respectively.
• Financial wellness: Budgeting workshops, investing education, and access to an employee assistance program (EAP) help staff build stability.
• Student loan repayment: This perk just became more attractive to offer. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act made employer student loan assistance a permanent, tax-free benefit, yet just 14% of employers currently offer it. With nearly 43 million Americans carrying federal student loan debt, that gap is an opportunity for clients to differentiate.
• Pet insurance: A lower-cost addition that can support recruitment, retention, and day-to-day employee stress.
• Family-forming support: Fertility care, adoption assistance, and related coverage resonate with a wide range of employees, including LGBTQ+ couples, those pursuing adoption, and single parents by choice.

Voluntary benefits like these sometimes go underused, not because they’re unwanted, but because they’re not highlighted during open enrollment conversations. Clients get more value when these options are woven into the main presentation instead of tacked on at the end or in follow-up communications.

Start early and bring in the right support

It’s never too early to start planning for open enrollment. And because this may be the first time some SMBs have updated their benefits in years, it’s worth taking the time to do an end-to-end evaluation.

This is where a PEO partnership can give brokers another resource to bring to the table. For instance, ExtensisHR provides access to Fortune 500-level benefits plans, full-service administration, and a mobile-first Work Anywhere® platform, which collectively take a lot of the manual lift out of enrollment season.

Our Employee Solution Center (ESC) adds another layer of support, helping worksite employees navigate:

• Enrollment walkthroughs: The ESC team explains plan details, helps employees use the platform, and confirms elections are submitted correctly.
• Plan comparisons: Clear explanations of terms like “deductible” and “out-of-pocket maximum” help staff choose the plan that’s right for them.
• Qualifying life events: When something like a marriage or a new child changes an employee’s coverage needs, the ESC helps them make adjustments as needed.

Working with a PEO helps brokers extend the value of their client relationships beyond the annual enrollment period: stronger plan options, clearer communication, and dedicated support that clients notice. That combination can turn open enrollment from a once-a-year scramble into an ongoing reason for clients to value the relationship, and it gives you a concrete story to tell when you’re competing for new business, too.